On November 18, 2022, a 5.6 magnitude earthquake hit Pecos, West Texas, near the Mexico border, the strongest recorded in the area. Named “Frackquake” due to its association with fracking, this event prompts reflection on its impact, merging Meso-American cosmology, fiction theory, and critiques of extractivism.
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Is there anything more Lovecraftian than the building of a new pipeline, winding its blobbing flutes? The question is: How long can the cavernous sentience ride in this modern vehicle?
Reza Negarestani, Cyclonopedia. Complicity with Anonymous Materials
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Fantastic literature and science fiction are the new “pop” metaphysics, the mythophysics of our time.
Deborah Danowski and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, The Ends of The World
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I repeat, once again, this interrogation is useless. Condemn me to death, if you want. Or lock me up for life in prison. Or, better, deport me to my country of origin, so I could get as far away from this place as possible, before more terrible events continue to happen.
I can add nothing more to my testimony. I have already told you everything I remember about that night when Zoe Rodriguez-Stuart disappeared. If some details seem vague to you, that is due to the fog that settled in my mind since I turned up, without knowing how, wandering, lonely and dazed in Big Bend Park the day after her vanishing.
I repeat, Mr Police Officer: I don’t know what happened to Zoe. It is true that during the last year I was her closest friend and that she shared with me her incredible findings about the mystery that surrounds the Mictlán Well. I have never denied that witness who claims to have seen us on the road from Marfa to Big Bend Park, at about 5:00 p.m.
However, what followed our travel from the artist residency in Marfa to oil wells near the park, I have already recounted. But you insist that you find suspicious gaps in my testimony. I repeat again, with all due respect, that I know nothing more than what I saw and heard that night. I would love, as the psychiatrist who examined my claims, that the cause of all this was a phenomenon of hallucination or mass hysteria. But the documents that back me up argue otherwise.
As I have stated before, Zoe’s investigations of the Mictlán Well, at first, seemed to me to be very nonsensical. Prior to applying for this fellowship, she had researched the geography of south-central Texas on her own, as well as read many papers on anthropology and archaeology related to the ancient aboriginal tribes that had inhabited the area.
Because of my admiration for her work, it didn’t really strike me that Zoe found a connection between materials that to anyone, like me, would seem implausible. These are the same documents I gave you as evidence to prove my innocence: a report from the U.S. Geological Survey; two newspaper reports by local media; an invitation to a womb-blessing ritual; an excerpt from a lecture on pre-Columbian Mexican archaeology; and a pamphlet from the Church of the Last Salvation.
The coincidence Zoe found among these documents of such disparate origin is that they all refer directly or obliquely to the increased frequency of seismic movements in the area, as well as the recurring findings of human bones in the vicinity of an oil development: the Mictlán Well near Big Bend Park, the deep-injection oil development that is part of the Trans-Pecos Pipeline Corp.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey report filed by Zoe, seismic activity has reportedly increased in the area since the implementation of fracking, a highly polluting unconventional oil drilling method. Alongside this report was a newspaper clipping with a report from the Texas Tribune. It investigated the discovery of human bones in the Mictlán Well after one of the recent earthquakes in the area. As if the skeletal remains had been expelled from the interior of the earth as a result of the tectonic movements.
Based on rigorous forensic sources, the report clarified that the bones came from different historical periods. Some would date back to pre-Columbian times. This would rule out the possibility that they were just the remains of bodies of illegal immigrants buried in the area by cartels and trafficking networks; as well as the unidentified bodies of undocumented workers, whose fatal accidents are often covered up by oil companies to hide their irregular work situation.
Next to this newspaper clipping, there was an invitation to a womb-blessing ritual. It was organized by a new age feminist organization called Universal Menstrual Energy, which rotated its annual celebration in different parts of the world. This year they had been invited to perform their annual ritual in Marfa. In addition to this invitation with a Vagina Dentata, the iconic logo of this organization, there was an excerpt from a lecture on pre-Columbian Mexican archaeology.
That excerpt belongs to an ongoing research project. In accordance with the transcription of the cryptic language of the pictograms by the renowned linguist and anthropologist Helga Lovelace from the University of Miskatonic, it offers a translation of a prophecy encrypted in the missing Cohauiltec codex, the Amoxtli Miquizlli, or Cohauiltec Books of the Dead. In this paragraph the end of time would be announced.
In conformity with that paragraph that would have been reproduced from the Amoxtli Miquizlli, the Apocalypse would be provoked by the Chotalli, the white invader, and his gray serpent that corrupts and pollutes the Earth. They will inadvertently awaken Coahuitetl, the fire serpent. Conforming to the Coahuitetltec cosmogony, Coahuitetl is the great goddess of the tectonic depths, represented headless, with a female torso embraced by two serpents and a belt of human skulls. This is the Coahuitetl version of the great Aztec Coatlicue. She sleeps since forgotten geological eras in the deepest sediments of the rocky deposits. But, as the heirs of the aboriginal peoples who have inhabited these lands since immemorial time know well: “What sleeps eternally is not dead,” as stated in the translation of the renowned Dr. Lovelace.
Using the intuitive chaos that guides artistic creation, Zoe also had in her file a curious pamphlet from the Church of the Last Salvation. This Protestant sect is an offshoot of orthodox Mormonism and is recognized for keeping a fundamentalist fidelity to the beliefs and ritual practices of primitive Christians. The pamphlet that Zoe had filed warned with a scatologist discourse, about the opening of “Hellmouth.” This is a medieval allegory, very recurrent in the painting of that era, which alarms about the return of Satan to Earth. According to it, he would ascend to the surface from the subterranean depths, transfigured into a Black Fire Dragon. It was accompanied by several illustrations of the Hellmouth, such as the one in Catherine of Cleves’s The Hours and the one that appears in Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights.
Alongside this documentary material, there was another newspaper clipping. A recent news article about a police operation against the Church of the Last Salvation, following a complaint from an animal protection organization. They had been accused of performing ritual sacrifices with animals in the vicinity of the Mictlán Well.
About the origin of these documents and the motive of these investigations, do I have to tell you again that I did not fully understand it? I am neither a journalist nor a detective. I am just a photographer. I had come to Marfa because of its legend in the history of contemporary art, but mostly attracted by the exotic landscape of Southeast Texas. I had little idea what I was going to do there.
And the truth is, I realize now that it was better that way. Zoe had a very dominant character. I followed her everywhere more out of admiration than out of any real inclination to find hidden clues among such diverse materials. Anyone would think that rather than a contemporary art project, Zoe was researching to write a conspiracy thriller under the influence of The Da Vinci Code, with the psychedelic absurdity of Thomas Pynchon. However, I never got the nerve to make any jokes about it. She was very charismatic. So much so that I must admit that, at times, I was even a little afraid of her. I remember how I shuddered when I saw her walking into my workplace the morning before she disappeared.
She interrupted a conversation I was having with another resident, an Icelandic sculptress, who was complaining about the tremor that had awakened her the night before. She had also been disturbed by the shrieks of the Universal Menstrual Energy acolytes. It was rumored that they were performing blood rituals under the full moon. And that at night they had gone to one of the wells of the Trans-Pecos Pipeline Corp.
For weeks I had been pining for that dreamy blue-eyed girl to talk to me about something other than the heat and the inhospitable life in the desert. But Zoe walked in without greeting, grabbed my arm and practically dragged me out. Her face was red with excitement.
— “Did you hear it ?”— she asked me insistently, as she grabbed both my arms.
Faced with my surprised expression she told me that a 5.6 scale earthquake had occurred in the Big Bend Park area, near the Mictlán Well. She took me to her workplace, which was nearby, and showed me the documents, the newspaper articles, the invitation from Universal Menstrual Energy, the excerpt from the academic conference and the pamphlet from the orthodox Mormon sect.
Then Zoe told me, in her usual bossy tone, that we had to get in the car and drive to Big Bend Park urgently. She wanted us to visit the well. We had to see the crack. I had heard about it on NPR. A crack more than twenty meters long had opened up around the Mictlán Well as a result of the earthquake.
— “You have to come with me, I can’t film myself alone. I need someone to hold the tripod and take a lot of shots, from different angles. I need you!”— she concluded emphatically.
I scratched my head, thinking. She had confessed to me that she wanted to recreate Ana Mendieta’s Silhouettes series of pictures of performances, where through more than two hundred performances recorded with photographs, the artist had mimicked the earth and nature in different ways. Zoe wanted to perform an act of disappropriation by recreating that series of performances. And she wanted to do it naked, with her body bathed in gasoline. And in the vicinity of a well. So she insisted that we had to go to the Mictlán Well. We must get there before the Trans-Pecos Pipeline Corp closes the crack, filling it with dirt and rocks.
I repeat, Mr Police Officer, that although I suspect Zoe has known horrors beyond my comprehension and yours, this is all I knew about the purpose of that excursion that took the two of us to the outskirts of Marfa. The excuse was an action, an art intervention. “Frackquake. A New Cosmogony”. That was the ambitious name Zoe wanted to name the piece. And she had promised me that I would appear in the credits.
So I couldn’t resist joining her on this adventure. If your witness, a gas station attendant on the road from Marfa to Big Bend Park, claims that he saw us together before she disappeared, I’m sure it’s true. I don’t remember it very clearly, though. Only a terrible scene was engraved in my mind. The last thing I saw before I collapsed, unconscious.
I guess it happened after the sun went down, because I remember a full moon peeking, splendid, over the bloody twilight sky. When we spotted the silhouette of the extraction pump, about a hundred meters from the Mictlán Well, we stopped the truck and got out. We did not want the guards of the trailers and the extraction machinery to notice our presence. Given what had happened in the previous days, the finding of bones, the sacrifice of animals or the alleged rituals with blood, surely they would have doubled the security staff in the area.
However, all was still. The trailer lights were off. Then I saw it for the first time. The crack was creepy. I had never seen anything like it. It was as if the Earth was unabashedly showing its guts. We loaded the camera, the tripod, and the flashlights. In addition, Zoe carried half a can of gasoline in her backpack. The place was still silent. Only the usual whistling of the desert wind and our footsteps walking on the fractured rock could be heard.
Instead of calming me down, this solitude had triggered my anxiety even more. I trembled before an evidence that I could not express in words. As we got closer, a stench of decomposition assaulted us. However, we did not notice any organic remains in the surroundings. Surely the police had already collected the remains of the sacrifices. The strangest thing was that the stench seemed to come from inside the crevice. It was as if the earth itself was erupting, eliminating nauseating gasses through its open maw.
In a sort of hollow, where the fracture rose up a bit and a very good panoramic view of the landscape could be captured, I gestured to Zoe, giving her to understand that this place would be fine as a scenery for photographs. Over the edge of the cliff, above our heads, the gigantic full moon crowned the natural catacomb that stretched out before us. We decided not to turn on our flashlights. Those imposing rays would be our only illumination.
As I set up the tripod and prepared the camera, Zoe undressed in front of me. Like a nymph from a pre-Raphaelite painting worshiping an obscure divinity, her long red hair fell over a pale, slender body that shamelessly displayed itself before my embarrassed eyes. A strange blush ran from my crotch to my head. I looked down and turned on the camera. Zoe had already smeared gasoline all over her body. Then I focused the lens on her slender figure, covered in that dark oil.
As I adjusted the camera’s focus pointing toward her back, Zoe had peeked out of the crevice. Then I heard it. It was like a clicking sound. A sound made like a huge tongue. It certainly wasn’t a human sound, though. The strange noise was coming from inside the fracture. Then there was a tremor on the earth. I called out her name in a strained voice. Before her lack of response, I shouted for her to move away from the crack. But she kept her back to me, staring inward, fascinated.
Then another effluvia of flatulent gas ascended. To avoid being knocked down by the nauseating wave, I took two steps back. And I sensed that something was moving inside the fracture. Still staring at Zoe’s back, who no longer showed any signs of life. Smeared in black, while something even darker, like a flowing river of cadaverous material, was moving in front of her. That was what fascinated her. I walked two steps toward the crevice.
— “Stay there!” — she said without even turning her head to look at me — “Don’t come closer! Get out of here!”— she shouted at me in a voice that, I know now, was perhaps no longer hers.
I can still hear, inside my head, the inhuman coldness of that last order. And also the panic slithering like a cold-skinned lizard down my back. Then I heard a loud cracking sound, like bones breaking, followed by a kind of monumental yawn. And I swore that a black tongue, with shiny reflections, like oil, came out from inside the crevice and dragged Zoe into a monstrous embrace with it. Her suffocating voice still echoes in my memory.
I stood alone, transfixed in the darkness, knowing I had captured everything with the camera’s relentless eye. But at that moment, the rock shook again beneath my feet. And another crunch, followed by another wave of nauseating effluvia came from below. As if a prehistoric animal was waking up. I began to runwith adrenaline pumping the blood through my veins at full speed. I reached the truck and remembered I didn’t have the keys, so I kept running, lit only by the full moon.
I remind you, that I was neither mentally nor physically prepared for such an event. What happened to her is something I can only outline with these ominous impressions and feelings that I am recounting to you.
As I was running I felt it. A threat beyond the reach of human imagination. The corrosive breath of a telluric entity clawed at my back. And a few seconds later, with tachycardia and my heart almost beating out of my chest, I fell and hit my head on a rock. The next day, I woke up in the mesquite groves of Big Bend Park, several kilometers from the Mictlán Well. A forest guard found me with a bump on my head, dehydrated, lost, confused. And, most of all, scared to death.
I know you still don’t believe me. And that you suspect I had something to do with Zoe Rodriguez-Stuart’s disappearance. But the time will come. Don’t worry, you’ll believe me. Stay tuned. Follow the news. Especially the tabloid media. I hope the more serious media will also pay attention. if you haven’t noticed yet, it continues to multiply along the entire network of Trans-Pecos Pipeline Corporation wells. Surely it will spit out her bones, Zoe Rodriguez-Stuart’s bones, in the next few days. Or in the coming months. Or years. Or maybe it will keep them in its guts and spit them out in several eons. When there will no longer be any human being on Earth who can witness the traces of its vengeance against us.
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Ana Llurba